Real World Instrumentation with Python

Suggested Reading

Here are some books that I’ve found useful when working with curses and with the wxPython and TkInter GUI toolkits. I’ve also included some links to interesting sources of information that have a direct bearing on this chapter:

Programmer’s Guide to ncurses. Dan Gookin, John Wiley & Sons, 2007.

Dan Gookin’s book covers the ncurses Version 5.5 library and is relevant to Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. Although it only covers the C API, the tutorial material helps to clarify what Python’s curses library is doing and why, and many of the examples are easily translated into Python. The reference sections of the book are also very useful and provide a quick and easy way to look up obscure or half-forgotten functions.

wxPython in Action. Noel Rappin and Robin Dunn, Manning Publications, 2006.

Covers the Python API for the wxWidgets library. Includes numerous examples, but there’s a lot to cover here, so some topics get a more in-depth treatment than others. Just be prepared to either dig into the wxPython source or translate from the C++ sources in the wxWidgets code if you have a need for some arcane knowledge on a topic not fully covered in the book. In any case, if you want to work with wxPython you need to have this book on your desk.

Cross-Platform GUI Programming with WxWidgets. Julian Smart, Kevin Hock, and Stefan Csomer, Pearson Education/Prentice Hall, 2005.

The definitive reference for wxWidgets. This book is thick and full of details, and when wxPython doesn’t make sense, ...